


the open window

by simply_kelp



Category: Neverland (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), M/M, Non-Explicit, Peter's kind of in love with his father figure/enemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simply_kelp/pseuds/simply_kelp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter hates Wendy. He hates her stories about a mother who isn’t dead and who waits at the nursery’s open window for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the open window

Peter hates Wendy. He hates her stories about a mother who isn’t dead and who waits at the nursery’s open window for her. He hates the way his crew have fallen so much under her spell, hates the way they call her “mother” so fondly. He hates her babying Michael who is younger than Peter and still has all his milk teeth, hates the way she calls him “father” and gives him that strange look that seems to want something of him.

“Never needed mothers before,” Peter mutters. He curls his arms around his knees and speaks into them. “We were all perfectly fine until _she_ came along.” And it is here that Peter begins thinking all sorts of nasty thoughts toward the lady underground in a blue nightdress. Or else maybe a pirate lady. Peter himself isn’t certain which lady he is cursing and it doesn’t quite matter because every lady he has met tried to take from him.

“You loved him, didn’t you?” Curly says. Peter starts. He, being rather wrapped up in his own thoughts, had not been paying the slightest attention to the noises of the forest. It was very fortunate for him that the one who snuck up on him (itself being a great feat as Peter was not easily snuck up upon) was only Curly and not one of the pirates.

What Curly asks isn’t a question, but still Peter wants to say ‘no’ or pretend he doesn’t know what Curly is on about. He could do it too. It would be easy. Just glance over and ask ‘who?’ very smoothly and Curly would be so very uncomfortable that he would blush and look away and never mention it again.

Peter opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He can’t bring himself to look in Curly’s direction.  
“It was always different for you,” Curly says. Peter can feel the thrum of nervous energy coursing through Curly, can hear his fingers gripping at the moss under them. It isn’t that he wants to talk about this, but he knows Peter needs to. “We always needed Jimmy, but he needed you back.”

“Doesn’t need me anymore,” Peter says. He can tell from the way Curly winces that he didn’t keep all the spite from his voice. “And I don’t need him.” The words sound hollow even to his own ears.

“I don’t know about mothers or windows,” Curly says. Peter half-expects the other boy to continue, maybe saying just the right thing to make Peter feel less like crying. But Curly doesn’t. Because Curly is only a boy; a clever boy maybe, but still a boy. “It’s a nice story, but…”

Peter waits for Curly to finish speaking but it never comes. He glances sideways at Curly who is pulling at a loose thread on his sleeve. He thinks of Wendy and the open window, of a dirty London workhouse and the crinkles of skin around Jimmy’s blue eyes. He feels the shadow of a hope. It lifts him until his feet are floating above the ground, takes him up and up and far away to the other side of the island.

Starlight trickles through the tufts of cloud. It spills onto the ocean’s surface as if thousands of tiny fireflies were gliding over it. The pirate ship is asleep, resting on the ocean’s surface like a swan. Peter, knowing that the Captain’s cabin is always at the very stern of a ship, drifts aft. He pauses only one moment to tweak the sleeping Smee’s nose and toss the pirate’s revolver overboard.

And is it? Yes, it is! The window left wide open. Peter is so glad of this that, rather without him trying, he shoots upward until he stumbles into a puff of clouds. If you have never flown before, Peter would be one to tell you that were you to surprise a cloud as by shooting up into it, it will often tickle at your cheeks and behind your ears until you leave it be. Peter, knowing this, swoops down from the cloud while it is still confused and trying to tickle his shoes and makes his way to the open window.

He hangs outside, peers into the room. It is dark but Peter can make out the outline of a figure on the bed. He glides inside, slips from his clothes as deftly as from shadow. The figure stirs, freezes, recognizing a foreign presence in its cabin. Hook stares at Peter with Jimmy’s eyes.

“You left the window open,” Peter says. His voice is quiet, thick as if he has to force the words out. They hang heavy in the air between them. Hook doesn’t speak but he turns the corner of the blanket down in invitation.

Peter floats across the room, his bare feet gliding above the wood floor. He slips under the blanket, presses himself to Hook’s side, remembers the times he used to climb into Jimmy’s bed after particularly nasty nightmares. Hook winds his arms around Peter’s form and Peter is reminded of snakes. It’s a pleasant sort of constriction; Hook’s arms are strong, far stronger than Peter’s, warm with just an edge of danger to them. Peter feels like a bird held fast in Jimmy’s palms.

“Please promise me you’ll leave your window open,” Peter says, lips barely sliding over Jimmy’s chest. “Please always leave your window open for me.” The only answer Peter gets is the rise and fall of Jimmy’s chest. He tilts his head up, looking through his lashes into Jimmy’s forget-me-not blue eyes. “Please,” he whispers.

Jimmy’s lips curl into a slight smile. He runs his hand through Peter’s hair and around to his cheek. Peter leans into the touch and smiles a smile so bright and innocent that even the fearsome Captain Hook forgets completely evil for a moment. It is shortly after this that the two drift off into slumber.

In a few hours, just before rosy-fingered Dawn stretches her arm over the island of Neverland, Peter will wake and, with one last look at Jimmy’s sleeping form, fly out the window. A while later Jimmy will rouse to find a trail of skeleton leaves at his window. He will toss them out but leave the window open.


End file.
